This year, and this week, in Republican Party politics and in American conservatism has been about nothing but moral, intellectual, and institutional decadence. It did not happen because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump emerged because the institutions were rotten. It is an almost Shakespearean twist that Roger Ailes is being defenestrated from atop the Fox News empire even as Trump receives his crown in Cleveland.

Trump didn’t steal the Republican Party. It was his for the taking, because the people who run it and the institutions surrounding it failed.

When Trump loses in November, maybe, just maybe, some new blood and new ideas will rebuild the party.

And if he wins? We will have far bigger things to worry about than the fate of the Republican Party. We will be forced to contemplate the fate of the Republic itself.